Energy saving expert system for West Virginia K-12 schools

Investments on energy efficiency measures adopted by K--12 School boards across West Virginia (WV) have not always been economically successful. Since finances play an important role, and school boards have limited resources to invest on energy efficiency measures, the school boards are left with difficult choices on how best to use their funds. An expert system developed in this thesis work aims to assist the WV School Boards to examine the feasibility of implementing different types of energy measures. The expert system acquires data from the user and uses the information to provide the user with savings, installation and payback advice. Many energy efficiency measures were examined for this thesis but only the measures which could have faster paybacks (mostly less than 10 years as required by WV state law) were considered and implemented in the system. Many parameters such as fuel types, climate zones and cost of the fuel were considered in the energy saving options. Some WV school systems have already been studied by the WVU, Center for Building Energy Efficiency. Some energy saving measures have been employed as test cases during the expert system development, with less than 10% difference in results. The expert system developed in this thesis is user friendly and can be upgraded in the future as new measures are included